If Danny Cheeseman hadn't been living in a tent on the cliffs in Newquay, mum Sam Wylde would not be alive today.

The 50-year-old teaching assistant admits she was having a 'bit of a midlife crisis' when she drove down from Birmingham with a friend and parked up on the clifftop at Towan headland.

Seeing a group of people partying around a campfire nearby, she decided to join them. A few beers later and all she remembers is her foot began to slip and she woke up in a heap at the bottom of the cliff.

Sam had fallen around 20ft onto rocks at Little Fistral. It was pitch black. Her head was bleeding with gashes to the front and back. She was concussed but very lucky to be alive.

"I was drunk. I didn't see the edge. I just went right over it," she told Cornwall Live. "Luckily the tide wasn't too high and there was a little ledge that caught me at the bottom but it could have been so much worse.

"I was half concussed, crying and hurting. I was a complete mess, lying there not knowing what to do. The people I was with were trying to help but they weren't much use. They were drunk too."

Sam Wylde, from Birmingham (Image: Sam Wylde/ Facebook)

It was Good Friday 2017. Danny, 33, was working at The Stable bar on Fistral and had just returned to his little pink tent perched on the clifftop, where he was staying after splitting with his girlfriend, when he heard a scream.

He ran over to see Sam at the bottom of the cliffs. Without a second thought for his own safety, he scrambled down to help her.

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"She was a mess at the bottom of the cliff," said Danny. "She was in a heap and she had blood coming out of her head. I had to grab her by her belt and haul her up."

Lifesaver Danny Cheeseman (Image: Danny Cheeseman/ Facebook)

Sam was conscious, but helpless. She couldn't move. Luckily, Danny was tall and strong enough to pull her and drag her over the top.

Sam remembers nothing but his posh voice as he talked to her, trying to keep her calm and persuade her to let him call an ambulance. She refused. Instead, he took her to her car and checked on her every hour through the night.

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The next morning, Sam felt awful but she left without ever seeing the mystery man who'd saved her life.

"I couldn't bring myself to go back and say thank you because I felt too ashamed," she said. "I've got a couple of kids. I was having a bit of a midlife crisis. It was just a terrible thing that I'd done.

Sam and her dog Christi (Image: Sam Wylde/ Facebook)

Instead, Sam disappeared back to Birmingham.

But when she got home, she realised she needed to find the man and say thank you.

"I tried everything. I posted in the Newquay Facebook group and contacted Jon Goodman, who runs the group, to ask if anyone knew the man with the posh voice in the pink tent.

"I've been down to Newquay several times and every time since, I've been asking if anyone knows him, but no one could help me."

On her 50th birthday, Sam returned to the spot where she almost died and lit a fire and threw flower grenades over the cliff.

Sam Wylde had a campfire on the cliff on her 50th birthday (Image: Sam Wylde/ Facebook)

Then last week, she pulled up at the same spot where she'd fallen over the cliff and got talking to a couple about what happened and they immediately recognised her description of the man with the posh voice as one of their friends.

They told Sam to return to the same spot at 4pm and said she'd find Danny there.